Abstract
THE importance of local museums is gradually but unmistakably forcing itself upon the country. It may take much time to foster any united action, without which any definite progress is very improbable, but year by year is adding to the ranks of those who are wise enough to see and have influence enough to advocate their value as a part of the educational stock-in-trade of the nation. We rejoice to see that Mr. Chamberlain has enrolled himself among their advocates in the House of Commons. On Monday he drew attention to the fact that the public expenditure for the promotion of science and art was exclusively confined to London, Edinburgh, and Dublin. The amount of the estimate this year, he said, for museums, art galleries, and parks in the metropolis amounted to nearly 400,000l., and that for Edinburgh and Dublin to nearly 50,000l. To those sums the provinces had to contribute twice over. Birmingham contributed about 4,000l., and had to find about 8,000l. a year besides for her own local art institutions. It might be said with truth that a national collection should be placed in the metropolis at the expense of the nation, but that argument did not apply to the expenditure on the public parks and still less to that which the Bethnal Green Museum involved. He did not complain of such expenditure. It produced most admirable results, adding as it did to the pleasure and happiness of great masses of the people, and tending to elevate and refine their minds. It was, too, in some sort a commercial investment, as it was calculated to enable artisans the better to compete with those of other nations. What he complained of was that the principle had not been carried far enough. He was anxious to see established in every one of our great centres of population and industry museums devoted to art and manufactures appropriate to each particular district. To show how highly these institutions were appreciated in the provinces, he mentioned that in Birmingham tbe local museum which had been established by private subscriptions was visited annually by 300,000 persons, and as the population of the town was only 370,000, the attendance was immensely greater than was shown by the returns of the number of visitors to our metropolitan institutions. Results equally extraordinary could be quoted from other provincial towns in which such museums existed. He further stated that although provincial communities were at present legally able to tax themselves to the extent of 1d., in the pound for the purpose of establishing museums and libraries, in Birmingham all this money went to the free library, and they had therefore no means of establishing an industrial museum.
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Local Museums . Nature 16, 228 (1877). https://doi.org/10.1038/016228b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/016228b0